During the Festival International des Ballons at Chateau D’Oex (Switzerland) this week, I had the opportunity to realize 4 flights with a Kubicek Super Sport balloon. I wanted to share with you my feelings about this original balloon combining the stability of traditional balloons and the reactivity of Racer balloons.

During the festival, the German Kubicek dealer, Thomas Koek, kindly lend me his brand new 2600 Kubicek Super Sport, equipped with the Paralite parachute system (as my Xtrem Racer). This is a comparison of design between a traditional 3000m3 (BB30Z) and a 3000m3 Super Sport (BB30XR).

Kubicek choose to adopt here the same shape than its successful Xtreme Racers (1700m3 and 2000m3). Kubicek thus announces a maximal vertical speed of 9m/s (1772 ft/min) and an amazing reactivity. Let’s go for the test !

During my flights in Chateau d’Oex, I enjoyed good weather and negatives temperatures to achieve the maximum vertical speed possible with this balloon. Please note that I had no thermometer inside the envelope, so I didn’t take the risk to overheat the balloon of Thomas. I finally achieved a vertical speed of 8.2 m/s (1615 ft/min) !

An other huge advantage offered by this racer shape is the reactivity. Indeed the racer shape offers less resistance in the air than a traditional shape, the balloon therefore climbing or descending faster. This is good to land in small fields or to climb quickly to reach a better layer of wind. Below is a graphic from my GPS track data, showing the vertical speed (in m/s) according to time and burner activation. The blue line represents the BB26XR I flew, whereas the red line simulates the reaction of a standard balloon as a comparison.

As you can see the Super Sport reacts quite immediately and the acceleration of the vertical speed is linear. Conversely, the standard balloon reacts slowly and the acceleration is harder with also a limited maximum vertical speed. Moreover, we can observe that the BB26XR stabilizes faster when we stop to heat.

German/Austrian Nationals will be held in 3 weeks with a total of 50 pilots. This will therefore be the biggest championship in Europe this year along with French nationals. On 50 pilots, 4 are flying a Kubicek Balloon. Indeed, Martin Wegner (Germany), Roman Hugi (Swiss) and me will take part will take part by flying a Kubicek Xtrem Racer, and Vojko Zupan (Slovenia) by flying a Kubicek Grand Prix.

Vous trouverez tous les participants de ce championnats sur cette page du site officiel / You will find all the pilot list on this page of the official website here : http://ballon2014.at/teilnehmer.htm

I am very proud to announce that Kubicek Balloons has accepted to support me this year by contributing to the expenses linked to championships participation. For now on, I’ve always paid everything on my own. I made a bank credit to buy my own BB20 Extreme Racer envelope along with a pickup and it was therefore very hard each year to use my own savings and support all the costs of championships and trainings. As I always have been a fan of Kubicek and proud of having their logo on my Demo Racer, I first thought of asking for their support before possibly looking for another sponsor. Fortunately, the Kubicek team, and especially Michael Suchy (Sales Director) was mobilized to help me and offered me a partnership contract. I feel very lucky and honored to represent Kubicek everywhere I will be flying for the next few years. I truly love their ballooning spirit, which is a balanced mix between tradition and high quality innovation. And I truly love my Racer because it has allowed me to make good results last year! (for this, I also have to thank Petr Kubicek, who actually designed it).

Last week I went to the Kubicek Factory to pick up my new bottom end. I chose the K13 Sport basket because it’s perfect for competition! The weight is around 40kg instead of 80 kg for similar regular baskets (1.20m x 1.10m), we save the weight of one cylinder! From my own experience, once during a championship I missed 30 minutes of gas autonomy to finish my last task and land safely. Moreover, it’s for sure a really good thing for your crews when they have to carry it on =).

The main elements used to reduce the weight of this basket are aluminium instead of steel basket frames, composite floor instead of plywood (this composite material was designed specifically for these baskets) and opened waves on two sides.

Sport baskets are made in two versions, one where one cylinder goes in each corner and the other where 3 cylinders fit along one side (very useful as a desk for competitions) and the 4th goes into one of the other corners, very useful to have a desktop to put all your weather and tasks sheets, Ipad and GPS =).